News for Restaurants in New Orleans September 2008 Archive

Daniel's on the Bayou has opened as a mid-range lunch and dinner option near City Park and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Finding the restaurant is a bit of a trick, since it's housed within the enormous apartment building, Esplanade at City Park. Enter through the building's main lobby on Moss Street facing Bayou St. John, or ring the buzzer on the unmarked side entrance on Esplanade Avenue, and you'll soon find this petite restaurant doing business from what looks like a corner apartment renovated as a dining room, kitchen and separate bar. The menu is a mix of comfort food, such as gumbo and roast beef or barbecue shrimp po' boys, and such dishes as roasted lamb or pork and shrimp sautéed with tomatoes and garlic over fettuccine. Entrées are priced below $15, and many are below $10. Lunch & Dinner Mon.-Sat.. Daniel's on the Bayou, 3443 Esplanade Ave., New Orleans, LA 70119, 504-940-5939.

The iconic, 1930's era restaurant Charlie's Steakhouse re-opened for the first time since Hurricane Katrina. The scruffy but beloved steakhouse was bought last year by local bartender Matt Dwyer, who completed a thorough round of repairs and renovations to the neglected, flood-damaged structure. Dwyer has tried to keep the same casual feel and basic menu that had endeared the restaurant to generations of New Orleanians and visitors, while generally cleaning up the place and improving a few fundamental amenities. The restaurant's bar is actually staffed now, for instance, a noticeable change from the old days. But the steaks remain bargains and come out of the kitchen smoking-hot and sputtering with butter. Lunch & Dnner Tues.-Sat.. Charlie's Steakhouse, 4510 Dryades St., New Orleans, LA 70115, 504-895-9705.

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Chef John Besh Honored The Louisiana Restaurant Association named chef John Besh as its 2008 Restaurateur of the Year, the industry group's most prestigious award. It's an honor he shares with such past recipients as the late Ruth Fertel, founder of the Ruth's Chris Steakhouse chain; Ralph Brennan, owner of the New Orleans restaurants Bacco, Ralph's on the Park and Red Fish Grill; culinary celebrity and chef Emeril Lagasse, whose restaurant empire is based in New Orleans; and chef Susan Spicer of the New Orleans restaurant Bayona. Besh owns and operates three restaurants in New Orleans: Restaurant August, The Besh Steakhouse at Harrah's and Lüke. He also owns, along with business partner Octavio Mantilla, La Provence in Lacombe, La.

Chef/owner Tom Wolfe closed his French Quarter restaurant Peristyle, though he also announced plans to open a new restaurant in the same location this fall. The new restaurant will feature "small plates," a chef's tasting menu and dishes that are "more creative than the French contemporary menu for which Peristyle was known, though some of the most popular items from the old menu will live on. Peristyle had a relatively long and exceptionally tumultuous tenure. Chef John Neal founded the restaurant in 1992. When he died in 1995, his protégé Anne Kearney Sand, bought the restaurant and built its stature to the top tier of New Orleans restaurants. The restaurant was gutted by fire in 1999 but re-opened the following year. By 2004, however, Kearney Sand sold Peristyle to Wolfe and moved back to her native Ohio, where she now runs a restaurant called Rue Dumaine. Wolfe is also chef/owner of Wolfe's in the Warehouse 859. Peristyle, 1041 Dumaine St., New Orleans, LA 70116, no phone.